Alistair Baillie

Time for another update I think, this time with another video. Since last time we have been off on another cruise which ends tomorrow. This week I have been doing much of the same; painting the lifeboats and tenders bright orange, testing fire screen doors and changing the water inside the lifeboats which needs to be done every 3 months.

I have also been progressing with my steering, having now completed 2 hours worth.

On the social front I went on one of the passenger excursions to Pisa for the afternoon on Wednesday mainly to just get off the ship, but also to get a chance to see it. One of the kids hosts was also going along, so after wandering around Pisa with the group we wondered off took some photo’s, had lunch and got some ice cream before heading back to the meeting point, and the coach back to the ship.

Yesterday we were in Villefranche, it was a wonderful day, slight breeze but otherwise very hot and sunny. We sailed from the anchorage on time, and within a few hours the ship was listing to port, and rocking quite badly. Weird thing was port side was dark & soaking wet from the spray, yet the starboard side was sunny and dry. Unfortunately you couldn’t open the doors onto the starboard deck because of the wind to enjoy it. Anyway, that continued for a few hours until around 8pm when Marc, Ian and myself were on the bridge taking some photo’s of the waves hitting the bow, when the bow lifted out of the water and we all had that weightless feeling you get on rollercoaster’s for a few seconds, before the bow came crashing back down into the sea, causing a wall of water to hit the bridge windows on deck 10! This obviously brought the captain and deputy captain running to the bridge – closely followed by the 1st officer and safety officer. The captain switched to manual steering and all the deadlights and watertight doors were closed, which is apparently normal practice when we have force 11 winds. Regrettably I didn’t manage to film the huge wave, but I have got a video of some of the later waves hitting the windows after the captain arrived on the bridge.

The weather improved slightly by the early hours, but was still 40 knot winds when we arrived at Mahon this morning, to find that we couldn’t enter the harbour because a Costa cruise ship had managed to ground itself around 1m from the pier at its allocated berth, it had since freed itself and moved to take up our berth so the port authority ordered us to wait outside the entrance to the harbour until 1330 when the Costa ship was sailing.

As I write this, we are docked alongside in Mahon, with a slightly delayed departure time of 2000 to give the passengers a little longer ashore, before we return to Palma and get a whole load of new passengers tomorrow.

Anyway, until next time.